Today we are going to delve into the text to look for the author’s use of figurative language. A simile is one of the most commonly used literary devices that authors use to make their writing more interesting. For example, an author might write the sentence:
The wind was blowing and it was cold.
By reading that, we would know it was cold, but the sentence is boring. The same message could be written with this sentence:
The bitterly cold wind cut through me like a knife.
By reading this sentence, I still know it is cold outside but I get a better sense of just how cold it might be. The author compared the wind to a knife, two unlike things, but when joined with the word ‘like’ they became compared to one another, thus creating a simile.